Friday, November 25, 2011

MASKS:PART 1:INTRODUCTION
Thank you Neke Carson for hosting this event and thanks to Veronica Vera for asking Neke to host the event. In this season of gratitude I would like to thank my deceased friends who mentored, inspired and permissioned my being an artist.
1. My parents Mildred and Henry Montano,both artists who modeled that art was a good path.
2. My grandmother, Magdalena Becker Kelly,for her wild wisdom and singing sans false teeth on holidays
3. I thank Mitchell Payne, photograper and light giver.
4. I thank Barbara Lehmann, writer, performance art collaborator.
5. And I thank Dr Aruna Mehta, second mother, teacher and dispenser of blessings.
Although all of them have left this world, their invisible applause is always in my heart.
I invite you to bring to your memory someone who always supported your creativity, thank them and see them applaud and encourage you, even now.

And I thank you, my colleagues for choosing to hire a babysitter,buy a subway ticket, take a bus or taxi, thanks for eating a quick burritto, opting out of your Pilates class and coming here when you could be home wrapped in your leopard SNUGGIE,bathed in the comfort of reflected light: light from your flat screen TV,light from your laptop,light from your open refrigerator, watching re-runs of Wendy Williams, Dr Oz, Conan, Anthony Bourdain,Caesar Millan,Dr Drew's Celebrity Rehab, The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Bootcamp, ...You could be watching Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell,you could be watching your avatar float in second life, ...You could be arguing with Whoppie and Joy on The View, crying with Wife Swap,watching Prince sing to Travis Smiley or travel to a near east hotel with Anderson Cooper...I feel bad because I do admit that being face to face is a big sacrifice especially without technological access to control, alt, delete, off, hide and remove buttons, our new friends. Thank you, thank you for giving ME face and endured time.But no, lets digress and clear the air.Why am I so insistent on this? Why do I feel guilt and shame again? You see, I have the patience for only one minute max of Anne Sexton/Peggy Lee and Thomas Merton youtube posts on facebook.But wait, I cant feel guilty because we will do a group ice breaker performance and that will be a blast, and I give you permission to use your Blackberries, you can text,surf your apps, answer your ringing cell phones, you can twitter,iphone,create a new 2nd life persona, network,do facebook, email, take bathroom breaks without asking permission, and after my one hour 4 minute video,(edited by the inimitable Tobe Carey) you can share in the group wig performance. A certain resume boost.

PART 2:THE CONCEPT BEHIND THE FILM MASKS;
Over the last 40 years I have periodically played with persona and gender as an art material, becoming imagined and real people. I call this work, Creative Schizophrenia, that is, I choose to leave my personality for aesthetic purposes and for medical research.Some have no chopice and that is called Life.
In the 70's in the middle of a life trauma I sat in front of a TV camera on a daily basis for a year and talked to it resulting in the film: LEARNING TO TALK(VDB).A medical note: I suggest that this would be a wonderfull cure for other selective mutes with PTSD.The seven women who came out of me at that time seemed competent, verbally secure, but culturally limited, vapid, complicit and secretly competitive.I was in my late 30's.I call them the MASK ON people,
IN the 90"s, as a reaction to menopause, a tenure dilemma and countless other personal tsunamis, I made the film, SEVEN STAGES OF INTOXICATION. The seven women I became acted as if they were marginalized terrorists, abused addicts, dangerous alcoholics and furious narcissists.But actually,I use the alcholic persona as a metaphor for the meditator in spiritual rapture,the meditator Divinely Intoxicated, in unspeakable ecstasy. See Teresa of Avila, St Francis of Assissi. I call them the MASK OFF people.
In the year 2003 I began to see myself as a puppett and I also wanted to become real and not imagined people.Real, like Hillary Clinton, Bob Dylan,,etc. One of the tragedies of this category is that when I asked another real person if I cold be/duplicate her she rejected my offer. Very dishartening and a reason to retreat to SECOND LIFE, I suppose.The real people I have become have real imperfections and private hells that are exposed by TMZ, People Magazine, The Huffington Post, Wolf Blitzer and Oprah. I call them the MASK ON AND OFF people.
2005 THE LAST MASK was put on, the death mask, the last straw. Not so bad when my teacher Dr.RS Mishra talked so easily about death, "You are already Dead." and "Die Daily" via meditation and I add, via our art . Why die daily? To quiet the other masks because he also said, "You have a daily choiceof heaven or hell..." and another great one..."We all have a MOTHER TERESA AND HITLER inside us...." And Lama Tarchin said 20 years ago to me In the Quashas' kitchen while looking at masks on the wall,"Take off your mask." Now I understand what he was saying and I call this fourth mask research performance, THE LAST MASK.

PART 3: WHY THE NUMBER 4?
For the sake of order and structure I am using the number 4 to talk about these 4 masks that we all share. Maybe these following lists can be templated over the concept of mask to see similarites, make associations, compare information. Please imagine a spread sheet and for each category mentioned, there is a correspondence between the mask and the "category".

1.Psychology says there are four levels of consciousness:
unconscious... located in the midbrain...MASK OFF
subconscious.....located in the diencephalon...MASK ON
conscious...all parts of the brain above the midbrain i.e. the diencephalon and cerebral cortex...MASK OFF AND ON
superconscious...all parts of the brain...NO MASK
now we must find a psychiatrist and neurosurgeon to explain this.

2.Hindus say there are definately 4 Chakras but more like 7(use the same MASK analogy as above)
Muladhara
Svadhistana
Manipura
Anahat
associated with the colors Red,Orange,Yellow,Green
Corresponding with
love and affection
security and safety
power and control
compassion
And the 4 chakras are locted in the first 4 glands:
ovaries/testes
pancreas
adrenals
thymus
But we must find a Brahmin to explain this meditation model.

3.Then there is the medical world which says we have four brain waves:
Beta: 3-35 oscillations, normal thinking
Alpha: 8-13 oscillations , rest
Theta: 4-8 oscillations ,children, adults, dreams, strong emotions
Delta: 3-5 oscillations, sleeping newborns
Where is the doctor?
4.And there is:
Hell
Purgatory
Limbo
Heaven...
BAPTISM
COMMUNION
CONFIRMATION
MARRIAGE
Where is the priest?
All I know is that on a minute to minute basis, I move in and out of gehanna then paradise, in and out of terror then spa , in and out of leaving then staying.....A mask dance without end.

PART 4A: MY INTENTION IN MAKING THIS FILM:
1.I love structure . Number and form are important focuses and a reliable foundation and grounding that give me pleasure even when there is no content. I could make a film about numbers, structure and concept alone and be very happy.
2.But also, the message of hope is important ...that is, that we all share this condition of going in and out of mental waves but that there is a way out. And so the film,MASKS, has an instructional value and my nun self likes that especially when I translate and see addictions as misguided ecstasy and really spirituality gone amuck.
3.The tape is a study in time because there is really boring footage from the 70s in this film. Then,time was long and cheap and it is so hard to endure it now . We get to see how our attention has changed in the last 30 years.More instruction.
4. My intention is always to point to death in my work, either formally MITCHELLS DEATH or as metaphor, LYING DEAD CHICKEN LIVE ANGEL, where I lay on a CHICKEN BED for 3 hours...resting? preparing? motionless? meditating?
5. My last intention is to look at secrets as art....my own secrets, secrets I've seen or heard about, political secrets, cosmic secrets...They have to get out and get unwound from our organs our brains our minds and once we Hiermonyous Bosch them out, we feel better,the viewer feels better,purified and cleansed. Art is so generous and we artists are chosen to do this job for all. Art lets us spew the dark out,laugh with and at it and Mother Art then transforms the puke so it is no longer small t-truth. Mother stirs and cooks it, feeding our hunger and turns our stuff into big T-Truth .Mounting this TRUTH, we ride BEAUTY GOLD into the sky.

PART 5 DISCLAIMER:
1. In the final wig performance after the video:please use no blood , no urine, no semen, no phlem,no fire, no knives, no sputum, no physical harm to self or others, no bombs, no guns ,no tazer guns.See my archive for how I incorporated a similar list of no's when I taught performance at UT Austin.Now raise your hand and sign an invisible release form that says you will not sue me, send a lawyer after me, hold me accountable on any level for anything you see, hear, do or wear tonight.(sign the air)
2.I ask your pardon and absolution for using accents so freely in my film. I grew up in a family where my Italian grandparents spoke very little english and what they did speak , they did so with a very thick accent which I found fascinating and I use the accent now with all due respect and with honor for all immigrants facing language issues and cultural isolation.
3.WARNING: There are references to alcoholism, profanity, urine therapy, abuse, medical interventions in this tape so:
VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
4. I_________________________________________DO NOT HOLD LINDA MARY MONTANO ACCOUNTABLE FOR ANY THING.DATE.___________________________________.

LINDA MARY MONTANO

NOVEMBER 21, 2009
FEAST DAY OF THE PRESENTATION OF MOTHER MARY IN THE TEMPLE
SAUGERTIES NEW YORK:TRANSFIGURATION HOUSE

Friday, November 4, 2011

Once upon a time, a very, very long time ago, in a very, very verdant green Italian village, there lived a girl child, an orphan girl child. All the other girls who lived there had long, thick, dark hair, olive skin, world-sharpened eyes and a freed up throat that could scream, yell, talk and cry. Orphan Girl, who was almost a mute, had blond hair, green eyes and as a cultural outsider, was shunned by her classmates who called her Orphan Girl. The name echoed in the mountains, "Orphan Girl, Orphan Girl, where are you?" She went into the forest, sat with the trees and flowers, drank cafe late from a thermos that she always carried and wrote nice words on the surface of a mountain stream, loving it when they instantly disappeared.

Of course, like in every fairytale, there is someone who represents wisdom and in this story, the deus-ex-machina is a wizened, wrinkled, long skirted, foul smelling, crabby, bent, rough talking but truth telling woman elder. Was she really a woman? It was hard to tell because her features had glued themselves together-----her nose to her chin, almost; her eyebrows to her cheeks, almost; her toenails grew into the bottoms of her crusty feet, almost. The gossipy villagers called her lots of names: witch, strega, bad news, nuscience, bother, charity case, pest, liability, and on and on...but for Orphan Girl she was a refuge and like-minded soulmate.

For the beauty of this story, let's give this elder an extraordinary gift and talent....it seemed simple and was nameless and it was that she could tell when the train which stopped in her village was 33 miles away and with her acute sensitivity she predicted the exact time the train would arrive at the station. Of course this savant knowing and sensing was so non-consequential that it impressed no-one but Orphan Girl. Who wants to listen for a train by putting your ear to the earth? Not a very practical skill!

Of course, she passed on this pedestrian knowledge to Orphan Girl but hidden beneath this simple circus-like-act was something more spectacular, something more usefull..a secret knowledge she handed onto Orphan Girl one rainy November day when the veil between life and death; the veil between truth and ignorance; the veil between suffering and happiness is very thin.

Here's how it happened: they were sitting in front of an open-pit fire, poking sticks at the embers, and the elder said: " Today is the day for me to tell you the complete story. Yes, I listen for when trains are near but also I know when they have wrecked. I know when trains have wrecked 700 miles away and Orphan Girl , it is important to know that life has many , many , many train wrecks because life is about change, vulnerability, flux, unpredictability, old age, sickness and death. You think you have it bad, being an orphan but I want to tell you the whole story about other weird and terrible things that have happened, might happen and could happen. Close your eyes and I will read you a story that I call: ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A TRAIN WRECK. Shhhhh. Let's listen."

Admittedly we are all sensing a pre-renaissance black-out, a "dark age" with recognizable and historically accurate symptoms witnessed by historians of the fall (and/or transformation) of other dynasties teetering on the brink of armageddon.(The Roman ,Ottoman, German, British Empires perchance?)

BREAK

Can't we all agree that in this 21st century, we are communally experiencing a bad taste and aftermaths from universally experienced phenomena such as:

Oh, our poor bodies/minds are dodging the toxic arrows of it all! Dodging thoughts about pcb's and thoughts of no more potable water or no more fish or ice-sliding-glaciered polar bears! Thoughts about what to do about our arthritic thumbs twittered to spasm. Thoughts about ourselves and the suffering others! Not only thoughts but also memories of once looking in the mirror at our faces sweetly smiling back with innocent anticipation of a McDonalds. NO MORE. In preparation for a post-modern re-look at Revelationed-robotization, our current faces are facebooked/addicted into social shyness, not to be relieved by a 1970's Kumbayaah singing picnic on a green, chemical free lawn. That chapter is closed, my friend.
DELETE

Now, our poor bodies, steel-tight with earthquaked fear of the next day's news or trembling over the calories and sugar content of the morning's Starbucks or tripping out of buildings quickly when rumblings at yet another fault-line are recognized by sensitive dogs,....our battered bodies.... run on PTSD/empty seeking refuge in second-lifed, C-PAPED-accompanied nightmares.

HIDE

But wait, out of this harrowing scenario of a reality show gone bad, comes Hope?

The fairytale ends here and the old woman said, "That's it, Orphan Girl, you know the whole story. Now open your eyes and your voice and don't ever be surprised again when you encounter a life-wreck. They happen all the time and you are prepared, never to be surprised when strange things happen in your life." Orphan Girl was elated, glad she had been taught these important secrets and danced the OPEN HEART VOICE DANCE, around the fire.

That night, at 8pm, they both slept with their ears to the earth, in silent preparation for the next train to come.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

MONEY IS GREEN TOO MANIFESTO
1. ALMOST ALL MONEY IS PAPER. THINK TWICE BEFORE CREATING A WAY TO SPEND MORE&MORE MONEY BECAUSE THEN YOU COMPROMISE A TREE.

2. SOME MONEY IS IN THE FORM OF PLASTIC CARDS. THINK TWICE BEFORE CREATING A PERSONAL NEED TO HAVE MORE TOXIC PLASTIC IN YOUR LIFE.

3. CREDIT CARDS ARE TO BE SEEN AS EQUIVALENCIES. THAT IS, IF WHAT IS VISUALIZED INSIDE THE CARD AS A REAL ASSET IS TRULY THERE, THEN USE THE CARD. IF WHAT IS VISUALIZED INSIDE THE CARD IS A PROBABILITY, THEN DON'T USE THE CARD.

4. MONETARILY DO UNTO OTHERS AS WAS DONE BY OUR GRANDFATHERS. THAT IS, OUR FATHERS AND GRANDFATHERS SPENT ONLY WHAT THEY HAD. FOLLOW THEIR EXAMPLE. IF YOU DON'T HAVE IT, DON'T SPEND IT.

5. DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WANT DONE UNTO YOU. BEFORE YOU MAX OUT A CARD, THINK OF THE TRIED AND TRUE AMERICAN WORKING THREE JOBS TO PAY OFF YOUR MONETARY EXCESSES. SPEND THREE MINUTES A DAY BEING SOMEBODY ELSE. THAT IS, BE THIS PERSON WITH 3 JOBS IN YOUR IMAGINATION AND THEN DECIDE WHAT TO DO.

6. THE GOVERNMENT IS HYPNOTIZING US TO BE FINANCIALLY CARELESS, EXCESSIVE AND IRRESPONSIBLE. IT IS A PLOY AND WAY FOR THEM TO THEN DO A POLITICAL INTERVENTION AND PUNISHMENT THAT HAS CONSEQUENCES THAT ARE TO BE FEARED.

7. "I WILL MAX OUT MY CARD BECAUSE I'M TERMINALLY ILL" IS A MONEY SIN AKIN TO ANYTHING YOU MIGHT CONSIDER A SIN IN YOUR INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE. WHY? BECAUSE SOMEBODY'S HARD WORKING BROTHER WILL HAVE TO EVENTUALLY PAY FOR YOUR DEBTS.

7. BANKRUPTCY IS THE INQUISITION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS: THE "WORKER" TAKES UP THE SLACK OF THE "WANTER".

8. DO ONLY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD.

9. WANT ONLY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD. IF YOU HAVE ENOUGH MONEY AND HAVE BECOME AN ADDICTED WANTER, THEN ASK, WHY WANT?

10. TRANSLATED, THAT SAYS: ASK, WHY DO I WANT WHAT I HAVE BEEN HYPNOTIZED TO WANT?

11. STOP IMAGINING YOU HAVE MONEY WHEN YOU DON'T. IF YOU DON'T HAVE MONEY, GET A JOB AND LIVE IN A WAY THAT SUPPORTS YOU, NOT A WAY THAT SUPPORTS A HABIT THAT IS AN ELITIST AFFRONT TO YOUR SOUL.

12. MONEY IS ONE OF LIFE'S TABOOS LIKE SEX, DEATH. MONEY IS IN THE PROCESS OF BEING DE-TABOOED, BUT IS NOW AT THE LAUGHINGSTOCK/FOOL STAGE OF DE-CONSTRUCTION. BY TAKING MONEY SERIOUSLY, IT WILL BE RE-INSTATED TO ITS PREVIOUS POSITION OF RESPECT/ KIND-CARE AND WILL HAVE SURVIVED THE TEST OF TABOO.

13. ASK: ARE LOVE AND MONEY OXYMORONONIC OR CONGRUENT? WHAT ABOUT COMMODIFIED/SATISFIED? SUSTAINABLE/WASTEFUL? BARTER/BUY? GENEROUS/HOARDING?

14. THERE ARE 867,000 WAYS OF INTERPRETING POVERTY/LIVING WITHIN YOUR MEANS. RESEARCH THE TOPIC.

15. THANK YOUR HIGHER POWER FOR THE INVISIBLE RICHES IN LIFE, NOT THE ONES THAT CAN BE BOUGHT.

Dear Brain,
You keep me in you.
His face red? I don't remember.
His clothes black? I don't remember.
He walked where he is supposed to walk,next to me on the side of traffic, holding my hand? I don't remember.
Believe it or not, it was this same street? I don't remember.
Was there a mailbox to our left? I don't remember.
Does he talk softly? I don't remember.
Did I believe him when he said,"If I was to kill a little girl, I would cut her up into little pieces and stuff her body into a mail box."
Was I shaking then? I don't remember.
I shake now.
SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE
SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE
SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE
I REMEMBER,
Love, Linda

Have you ever met someone and mutually, immediately, exchanged bodies, minds, memories, eyes, liquids, and fires
with him?
Even though he was only 20 glowing planets away from my left shoulder, smells of his wife's extra strength TIDE
travelled nose to nose.
Have you ever tasted unguilted saliva suctioned into staglited hungry caves?
Have you ever forgotten how to wait and chosen instead to google then buy sandalwood oil imported from India?
WHAT'S THE COST?

DEAR LEONORA,
Obviously your class is extremely well endowed by the US Government because they provide free PHYSICAL THERAPY membership to some elders so that we can move, stay well and don't financially burden medicare/medicaid or our supplementalS with payments for ills that come from non-preventive health maintenance. For some strange reason, my insurance companies don't play this free game with me and I pay 300$ a year at this RESOURCE CENTER.
Money aside and back to the class titled MOVE IT OR LOSE IT.....each exercise is designed and engineered to help old people maintain flexibility on and off ice, balance in the kitchen, arm strength to dress/undress/cook/shop and 5000 other skills that healthy 40 year olds take for granted.

You expertly transmit all of these pre-designed movements accurately and correctly but this is my concern which I have previously communicated to you at least 10 times! Yes it is about VOLUME! SOUND! LOUDNESS! MUSIC! TONE OF VOICE! I feel repetitively embarrassed to come over and over to the front of the class to say , "CAN YOU PLEASE LOWER THE VOLUME OF YOUR MUSIC?" And it is becoming clownish of me to keep gesturing from my "EXERCISE SAFELY CHAIR" while waiving my arms and signing, "TURN IT DOWN, TURN IT DOWN , TURN IT DOWN!!!!"
Leonora, I think you must be a written word learner and not an aural learner or listener. So, HERE IT IS!!!!!! IN WRITING..... PLEASE TURN DOWN NOT ONLY THE VOLUME OF YOUR MUSIC BUT THE VOLUME OF YOUR VOICE. I responsibly wear ear plugs to class but LET ME SHOUT...YOUR CLASS IS STILL TOO LOUD FOR ME!!!!CAN YOU TURN IT DOWN?

Your students are in their 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and have lived through life/deaths/accidents/betrayals/debilitating losses/dementia/alzheimers/sagging skin/depression/ disillusionment/diarrhea/constipation/falls/brain injuries and a gazillion other life wrongs. And there are lots of rights! We are social workers/doctors/mystics/lawyers/fathers/mothers/nurses/entrepreneurs/teachers/meditators/cooks/writers/black belts/functioning volunteers/artists/lovers and care giving friends.

So please use your inside voice with us and be assured that you don't have to infantilize us or cheerlead us back to life. We are alive. STILL. Softly teach this wonderful class and we promise to breathe very kind gratitude to you in return.

" The ability to hold onto a piece of information in order to complete a task is specifically human. It causes certain regions of the brain to become
very active in particular, the frontal lobe,....which is highly developed in humans and is the reason we have such high, upright foreheads. Human
memory is acomplex phenomenom and involves other regions of the brain as well. Information is transferred from short term memory to long
term memory through the hippocampus,so named because it's shape resembles the curved tail of a seahorse(hippocampus in Greek.) The
hippocampus is a very old part of the cortex evolutionally and is located in the inner fold of the temporal lobe. Information is decoded in the
various sensory areas of the cortex then converges in the hippocampus which then sends them back from where they come from. We past
memories through the hippocampus several times....strengthen the associations , and then the cortex will have learned to reconstruct what we
call a memory."
Once she heard a story about a 12 year old girl who, while drawing a picture of an old Asian man from a book, remembered knowing him.
From where? A dream? Someplace else? Some other life? (Not a very Catholic explanation.)
Then 20 years later, she literally and truly met him, the same Asian man. Almost fainting, this real-time recognition was beyond the cortex.

A dream, flashback, past life? She walks east. A busy small village. Where? A tiny, adorable, cute, sweet, endearing 4 year old boy runs to her.
Brown skin. Another culture. A foreign country. Unaware of cars. Focused. One pointed. Wants to run to her. Why? Can hearts evolve from stone
to flesh in 3 seconds?Anatomically impossible but hers did. Adrenals propelled, eyes binoculared out of her head,silently shouting or maybe audibly,
"Baby, baby. Stop! Cars Cars Cars! Watch out." Fishing for languages she improvisatorily creates, she shouts, "Arete! Aiuto! Attende!" Nothing works.
Winded but frozen in place, her body morphs into Mother Love. My dream baby's 8 year old brother or cousin follows but the babitos pace is beyond
time and cosmically set, not to be matched.
Willing cars,trucks, vans,motorcycles, bikes and ambulances to be banned from the premises by some unseen force, he powers through the parted
sea of cars as potential killers into her arms. She kneels, absolves him, holds him at least in her mind, shakes him and tries 400 new languages to
teach Mother Law 101 to curb his instinct to innocence. "Dangeroso, dangeroso she moans. Dont you ever, ever, ever run away like that again.
Do you hear me?" By then younger brother and company are there translating my dnagerosos to periculosos, periculosos or maybe it is the other
way around. "Where's your real mother", I ask and the real is in silence. More commotion and a crazed with worry 16 year old babysitting aunt and
her friend breathlessly chant the same message, "Periculoso, periculoso, muy muy periculoso", and then THE MIRACLE! Time stopsand without
looking even to the sky to confirm his message, beauty babito baby point to his left and sings, "RAINBOW, RAINBOW!!",diverting his captive loves
from yet another almost 911 real time tear in the middle of the sorrow chest. Certainly diverting me from the coudha, wouldha, shouldhas mind to
instant rapture, and a harboring of new beginnings. As angel son and company concur and stop rescuing....rainbow, rainbow, they head west, I
north, but ever the magician he looks back at me with yet another translated by his cousin prophecy/warning,"Are you going home?"

She knows how to give good gifts. Quality was always a 10, durability factored in, even if it was mail ordered. Nothing cheap, including the
clock they gave me maybe 10, maybe 15 years ago.... a travel alarm, because I was always on the road. Thoughtful gifts. An emergency kit
for my car one year when it seemed I was living in it. And then they ran out of ideas, energy, unable to remember who I am or what I do
so this past Christmas I aksed for something recycled, in fact she had mentioned she had a cassette recorder and I said, "That would be great,
i'd love that." But when they cleaned the cellar and found it, mold, mildew, dust and a barry Manilow tape or something else equally dispicable,
clogged it forever. So via ebay, or cragslist or Wikipedia, or QVC, via Taiwan, Istanbul, or maybe Beijing she found a duplicate Sony knock off
version which I actually use as a defense against the ipad/blackberry/blueberry/iphone/kindle/digital camera and robot caregiver.
This morning, I responded to the sound of the 15 year old gift that has never had a battery change but now flutters for 30 seconds before it
offers a polite European-like wake up call to this traveller who now prefers journeying in the silence of the dark night.

Thirty-six inbches long/yellow-golden/aged/smeared with wear/readable numbers:
1.blackout
2.remember
3.remember
4.blackout
5.blackout
6.remember
7.blackout
8.blackout
9.remember
10.remember
11.remember
12.blackout
13.remember
14.blackout
15.blackout
16.remember
17.remember
18.blackout
19.remember
20.blackout
21.remember
22.blackout
23.remember
24.remember
25.remember
26.remember
27.blackout
28.blackout
29.remember
30.remember
31.remember
32.remember
33.remember
34.remember
35.blackout
Then it says 3, not 36. Where's the 6? But there are lines and words: Amos Post INC.,Petroleum Products, Catskill 278. Smell? Taste? No, but it elicits
immediate and constant flashbacks: Dad, where are you? Tell Grandpa I'm really, really, really ,really sad and sorry I didn't say a proper goodbye and
apologize. He knows what I am saying. But maybe he's sad too? The story is that when Grandma woke up from being sick with the 1918 Spanish Flu,
he had to tell her it killed their 3 year old only daughter and sister of 5 brothers. Did he hand Grandma a rumored photo of her in a child's coffin?
Aunt Uula, after that your mom sat mute for hours by the Partition street window day after day after day after day after year, teaching me how to
measure time.

It was a total betrayal. Senoir citizenzry and all of that kevetching had set in. Activism and volunteering for political causes which demanded
outrage/inrage/anger/ability to harass and blow off group steam had served her well as an organizer for umpteen issues truly unfair; from
female circumcision to migrant equal wages; from Kendra's law to fracking...she was a card carrying angeraholic/suffragetted hope-ette on
wheels, barking for change.
There isn't one deciding moment or reason why it all changed, why the anger turned petty, went internal and tasted bitterly explosive. Illness?
Death of friends? Early dementia? Whatever it was, the focus shifted to one,singly solitary, oxymnoronic task: to stamp out public, uncleaned-up
dog do. Like a mad anchoress released from a medieval cartoon, her morning walks became exercises of such intense detecting that she actually
became proud of her ability to sleuth out the size, shape, odor, placement and sex of the offending canine's refuse, soon to be earth mulch or
creamed "awfull" on a walker's shoe.
Didn't CNN report that there are some equally irate seniors with nothing to do and nowhere to place their fear of dying who live in Long Island
and take DBM (dog bowel movement) samples (uck!!!) from their shared Long Island co-op lawn, and then send the doo to a lab for DNA matching
up to the 4 legged offenders who live in their neighborhood. Now this is creative justice at it's best or a retired lawyers prank. What mentors and
new examples of patrolling with attitude they were!
But I had an idea to offer them: Why not monogram used Wall Mart plastic bags to hand out to early morning dog walking offenders, especially that
one at 6:30 with not one but 2 life sized megaton monster canines, verging on the obese. Do you have an idea for the moniker? Hmmmm,how about:

*************************************************************************************************************************************8. MOM, FIVE OF HER GRANDKIDS AND MITCHELL : A PHOTO

What's the title? "Unless the seed falls on good ground"...or something like that? Or is it the picture with 5 people wearing stripes, two not? Mom
stands, in lined pants stretched over an extended abdomen, legs suggesting A GRANDMOTHER QUEEN BIRTHING. She's my age now, or I'm her
age then and with a duplicate haircut, or wig, and if I were wearing those incredible pants, it would be me! And like her, I would be there , before
it happened, reveling innocence and forgetting like she always did, anything but beauty.
BIG BELLY MA, WITH THE KIDS IN STRIPES, that's the title. Most of them are happy to be there, a few pouters, all oblivious to the crouching , not
seen but actually center stage panting dog, symbolically previewing and harboriging the syncronisity of medical tortures to that BIG BELLY MA,
burned radiationally to death.
In the far right corner, a photographer taking a picture of the picure that is already taken. Double life , but he holds his camera to the same cheek
where the bullet entered and spattered now defunct grey matter all over his mother's kitchen.
Hey, new title: THIS PHOTO BY BIG BELLY ME: YOU'D BETTER GO GET A COLONOSCOPY!

9. A CONVERSATION ...FROM A PHOTO OF A GENERIC WHITE HORSE FOUND IN THE PAPER

I'm so large, so white, so magatonish! When just a stumbling gelding, Samantha dyed my mane pink and I tried out for a MY LITTLE PONY TV
commercial and a few years later, I wore feather angel wings for a walk-on in a play titled: Icarus. I was always a star. But that's the past. The
reason I'm even happier now is because I'm much too old for my current job in this charming village's equestrian competition. Samantha's family
used to bring me to jumping events every summer but I have to tell you what really happened and why I feel so liberated. Of course I will miss
the food, the apple snacks, the ohhs and ahhhs from the adoring girls and endless attention. How can I forget Miguel who hosed me down and
massaged me so lovingly every 4 hours when he wasn't running back to his hellishly hot trailer to check on his very situationally diabetic pregnant
wife and their other 4 vacantly unstimulated kids, hungry for lunch.
Even with all of the perks, the gig was horrible. How would you like it standing in a suffocatingly hot 4 horse capacity van driven by a taxied out
mother and a newbie teen who preferrred texting to talking. I never understood why Samantha's mom always seemd very peaced out on the trip
back after spending time with Uncle Bob at the local library or at least that's where she said they went, but they were so ozzingly gooey and happy
that it made me sick with suspicion. But the good news is that her mom was in a much better frame of mind (or was it body) and so she didnt mind
the 12 hour drive, round-trip! But me, oye vey! For hours I stood, in my own sweat, stink and shit, ankle-high-wet with pee , then robotically jumped
over pieces of wood, and endured the vibrationally lame stares of the entitled viewers who were eternally bored by excess, bored by too much food,
bored by too many stock dividends, bored by too many so called non-friends, bored by too much meaningless chatter about the Kardashians. By
association, I became as joyless, shocked into numbness and hopeless as all of them so one day I intentionally decided to become fat, sloppy, too
lame, too unfocused, and I tripped on purpose. Samantha cried for a week then her dad bought a new version of me to dry her tears.
Now, I truly fly in my dreams and gallop unhindered by phantom pain only when Samantha's not around.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************11. LOST

Dear friend,
For 27 years I have shared Nagasaki Day with you internally because at 9 years old, you lived about one and a half hours from there so for years I imagined
that you survived the violence and sin of war that occured in those two cities: HIROSHIMA/NAGASAKI. That was that, a quick and easy dismissal with horrible
images but my source of much information, the internet taught me otherwise, that is , I learned that Japan was incendenary bombed by B29's for about 6
months before the atom bombs leveled and decimated your country. But fire came first then nuclear devestation followed.

Once upon a time in a very verdant village in India, there lived a Brahmin princess, silver earringed at birth. She hardly had to chew as she grew since her
attendants, there were 8, did almost THAT for her, finger feeding her chapitis, dal, rice, keer, chai, and rice pudding. And she played back the attention
given her by fluttering her dark kohl lashed love eyes. Easy to adore, especially in a culture seeped in that virtue, she lived in mutually aroused ecstasy,
aided by loving touch by the massage walla who daily rubbed warmed coconut oil on her smooth as silk skin while and actually during the respective and
spiritually motivated touching of her lotus-feet in gestures of respect by friends, family and her growing numbers of students. At her birth, the village's
Guru had announced that neumerologically and astrologically, she really was a re-born saint/holy woman/Guru herself....a legacy holder of a tradition
forgotten generations ago.
Songs spontaneously came to her, lyrics hiding the secrets but in a new innocence she shared what she received from deep inside her primitive visioning
in a spirit of light-hearted joy. A true pioneer, breaking out of stody illusions, Padmavati suggested reform, suggested a pioneering reversal, suggested
change, an idea anethma to her class but there it was, right out on the table for all to see....let's not play around any more with this priestly class vs
the merchant class vs the agricultrual class vs the untouchables ! The gig is up and she sang over and over her message, practiced it, married a dalit
and taught her own family how to feed their attendants chapatis from their own hands. Love was the new name of the game.

*************************************************************************************************************************************************13. A LOOK AT THE WORD KINDNESS: ONE WEEK OF UNKIND & KIND EVENTS: IN AUGUST 2011

GANDHI SAID:WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY, THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

1. K.....A Kitchen called LOVE KITCHEN , run by 2 sisters Ellen and Ashe, has given over a million free meals since 1986. They minister to what
they call the 5 H'S: HUNGRY, HOMELESS,HELPLESS,HOPELESS AND HOMEBOUND. They prepare and distribute 2000 meals a week.

GANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

2. I....Investors reveal that one of the causes of the stock market collapse happened because the brokers sold investor bonds assuming
them to be safe only to discover they were worth less than the stocks.

GANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

3. N....Names of the 30 US soldiers kileed in the helicopter downed by the Taliban, will soon be released lifting the public shroud of secrecy
that sourrounds navy seal operations.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

4.D...Discontent has been simmering among Britons urban poor for years and few have paid attention to the socila issues underlying the
anger in London.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

5. N...Nairobi reports a cholera epidemic sweeping across Somalia as thousands of starving people flee famine zones and pack into
crowded camps in Mogadishu.

GHANDHI SAID: WEHN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGHOUT HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

6. E...Exercise, botox injections, denervation surgery, deep brain stimulation surgery, physical therapy, visualization, using a soft collar,
and elimination of all personal and siocial stress are some of the treatments used to deal with cervical dystonia/spasmodic torticollis.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGHOUT HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

7. S...Sharon stopped eating,began to exercise obsessively and after family nmeals, she would go up to her room to do crunches and jumping
jacks for 2 hours straight. She couldnt watch TV without doing pushups or running on the treadmill.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGHOUT HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

8. S..Spokesmen from the Maryknoll Fathers are determining if they will dismiss Father Roy Beaugeois who is campaigning to open the
Catholic priesthood to women. Father Roy indicates that he is following his conscience and that the prohibition on women ordination was
not an infallible church teaching despite vatican declarations to the contrary.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGHOUT HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.